WordPress 2.7 and XML Sitemaps
By Matt McGee on Aug 4, 2008 in Blogging
My eyes opened wide and my eyebrows raised high while reading this list of planned features in WordPress 2.7 on the Weblog Tools Collection blog. Tucked down in the middle of an otherwise uneventful list is this item:
Default Sitemaps - WordPress 2.7 will include a default sitemap creator, which will create Google XML sitemaps for your blog.
As someone who hates XML Sitemaps and is using WordPress on about a dozen blogs, I sure hope that “feature” (using the term loosely) can be turned off easily. Because, as I’ve said before, XML Sitemaps are the most overrated SEO tactic ever.
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8 Comment(s)
By Marcel Feenstra on Aug 5, 2008 | Reply
One potential “problem” with XML sitemaps is that mainly the more SEO savvy tend to use them, so they *may* raise a red flag with search engines. However, if they become a standard “feature” of WordPress, they are much *less* likely to be viewed as “negative” IMO!
By Browser on Aug 5, 2008 | Reply
I hope they will release 2.6.1 before 2.7
By Rajesh on Aug 5, 2008 | Reply
Marcel, Funny!!! Do you think that search engines will be able to distinguish between what comes out of the wordpress core and what comes out of the plugin factory? do you think that they will treat what comes out of wordpress core as authentic?
By Marcel Feenstra on Aug 5, 2008 | Reply
@Rajesh: I meant that, currently, XML sitemaps are used by relatively *few* sites; and I suspect that there is a fairly high correlation between the use of XML sitemaps and the site owners’ grasp of SEO-related techniques.
If, in the future, many/most/all WP based sites start using sitemaps, it would be harder for search engines to make inferences regarding the site owners’ “innocence” based on just their presence…
By ADCF on Aug 5, 2008 | Reply
I don’t understand your disdain for XML site maps. They are part of webmaster tools so how is that a bad thing?
This is the first that I have ever read about anyone who thinks they are a bad thing. If they are bad why are they important to Google?
By Matt McGee on Aug 5, 2008 | Reply
ADCF - if you click through to read the article I referenced above, you’ll understand my disdain for XML Sitemaps. Believe it or not, not everything included in webmaster central has value.
By Justin Briggs on Aug 8, 2008 | Reply
I’ve always been one to support sitemaps, but I like your post about why you hate them, and the clip in the SEO Moz video was good.
I think sitemap could be responsible with some of the problems one of my sites might be having. It has a lot of low quality pages, that would have prob been ignored if I hadn’t used a sitemap. I’m going to test the removal of the sitemap, and see what effect it has.
By Matt McGee on Aug 9, 2008 | Reply
Hey Justin — I’d love to know how your test turns out. Leave another comment if you get a chance - thanks!